Pope Leo XIV on Thurs­day made his most im­por­tant U.S. ap­point­ment to date, nam­ing a fel­low Chicagoan as the next arch­bish­op of New York to lead one of the biggest U.S. arch­dio­ce­ses as it nav­i­gates re­la­tions with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and its im­mi­gra­tion crack­down.

Bish­op Ronald Hicks, the cur­rent bish­op of Joli­et, Illi­nois, re­places the re­tir­ing Car­di­nal Tim­o­thy Dolan, a promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive fig­ure in the U.S. Catholic hi­er­ar­chy. Hicks takes over af­ter Dolan last week fi­nal­ized a plan to es­tab­lish a $300 mil­lion fund to com­pen­sate vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse who had sued the arch­dio­cese.

Hicks ad­dressed the mat­ter dur­ing his news con­fer­ence Thurs­day.